[cma-l] Charitable Status

Sun Feb 6 09:44:27 GMT 2011

Hi All
Sod’s Law dictates that not long after my last input re VAT, I had a rather disturbing telephone call from our Treasurer. Some weeks ago we had a letter from HMRC why we had reclaimed so much more VAT than we paid. He gave them details of our finances and they have now come up with the wonderful idea that we can only claim VAT refund on items we have paid for with money we have earned and not with money received as grants!

We are going to seek advice on this but I’d be very interested to learn if anyone else has come across this one?

Frankly, the VAT we might have to pay back is more than the pitiful amount we have in reserve!

Eddie

Eddie Winship
Chair, Reading Community Radio. Reg Charity No. 1119557
Streaming as Reading4u on www.reading4u.co.uk 
Walford Hall, Carey Street, Reading RG1 7JS
Tel: 0118 327 9774

From: Ian Hickling 
Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2011 6:57 PM
To: office at ccr-fm.co.uk ; Glyn Gloss ; cma-l 
Subject: [cma-l] Charitable Status

As I have said many times - the obvious solution is to run three businesses concurrently:

1 - The Community Radio station as a CIC which does not return a profit.
2 - A Charitable arm which can accept charitable donations which does not retrun a profit and feeds the station.
3 - A commercial limited company which can return a profit from a wide range of activities, is VAT-registered and feeds the station.

It's sensible business practice - not rocket science.

To lose that much VAT by default is just plain stupid - sorry!

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From: office at ccr-fm.co.uk
To: info at a-bc.co.uk; cma-l at commedia.org.uk
Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2011 14:34:48 +0000
Subject: Re: [cma-l] charity status

Glyn n’ all

Thanks Glyn …………. As I said …. It looks like everyone is fumbling around in the dark. Either we can as a fraturnity / brotherhood or we can’t …….. which is it …. ??  I dunno’?

Regards

Nick

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From: glyn.m.roylance at googlemail.com [mailto:glyn.m.roylance at googlemail.com] On Behalf Of Associated Broadcast Consultants
Sent: 04 February 2011 22:59
To: Office - ccr-fm
Cc: CMA-L
Subject: Re: [cma-l] charity status

Yes we had the same experience.  Essentially we discovered that a community radio station could not be a charity unless it fulfilled one of a number of narrow categories .  ie: if we decided to be a religious radio station then bingo, but we did not want to go that way.

Instead we went down the CIC route.  It was "sold" to us as being equivalent to being a charity, but from a recent approach from Inland Revenue I think it might have some drawbacks compared to being a charity (they seem to treat us like any other ommercial Ltd company) - but I'm not an expert.

Glyn Roylance

GLOSS FM.org

On 4 February 2011 18:16, Office - ccr-fm <office at ccr-fm.co.uk> wrote:

Dear All

Just a quick enquiry ………………. Does anyone know how many Community Radio Stations in our fraturnity/brotherhood are actually charities ??     I know that we looked into it 7 years ago but the process was a complete nightmare. Also, in 2004 I clearly remember that the Charities commision simply had NO category for radio ….. it was almost as if they didn’t understand it >?>?                              I think the key to it and the crux of the matter was that we were technically ‘’all over the place’’ in what we were providing ……… in otherwords, providing a lot, but nothing specific !                            almost          ‘’a jack of all trades but master of none’’

Have any of you guys had a similar experience ?                       I seem to recall that there is a station on the south coast as a charity ??              plus         Regen (near to us) in South Manchester who do run Wythenshawe FM and ALL FM ……………… outside of that, I’m a bit clueless to be honest ……. Any ideas ?

What about Sheffield and of course the CMA ?

Many thanks

Regards

Nick

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